Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Yora: "The first line from the Large Ham will be dramatic, portentous, often just before the act break and can almost always be replaced with: "Did somebody order A LARGE HAM?"." What is that supposed to mean? I completely understand the trope of the Large Ham, but is that line a quote? It would be nice to know where the name of the trope originated.

Vinay: Would Londo and G'Kar from Babylon 5 count? Both of them spend a great deal of their on-screen time turning it up to eleven- Londo ejecting the Shadows from Centauri Prime and G'Kar's mindrape scene both come to mind.

Duneflower: Chrono Trigger 's Dalton doesn't really fit; yes he's a Ham, but he's just not Large enough, however he might try. We never really see him anywhere near Magnificent Bastard territory, despite having most of the affectations: We never hear about him plotting much, and he never gets enough on-screen time to pull anything much off. Not to mention that he's about as annoying as he is dastardly, despite proving to be pretty competent in combat once he finally decides to take the gloves off. Almost more of a Dragon to Queen Zeal...actually, upon further reflection, what he really is is a one-man Quirky Miniboss Squad or possibly Team Rocket, as well as treading dangerously close to being an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain until you actually fight him. Also possibly the only Genre Savvy character in the entire game (maybe even Meta Guy material if he'd lasted longer), evidenced by his Fourth Wall breakage during a viewers-only scene (I know there's a trope for that somewhere...) where the developers offer him a bit of a "grand hero entrance" as he's about to launch his new (stolen from the heroes and modified) "air throne" and he promptly yells at them to cut the music, at which point they obligingly switch it to something more "crisis"-themed, much to his satisfaction. Yeah, yeah, I ramble...

Socran: He doesn't have to be largely successful to be a Large Ham. He just has to ham in a large way. Dalton has unique sprite animations for his hamminess, including the so-called "Dalton Pose". I think that qualifies him for Hamhood in the same way Kefka's laugh track qualifies him for Monster Clown status, before even considering his overinflated image of himself and inability to hide this from anyone. Magnificent Bastard is NOT a requirement. I mean, hell, all of the examples you gave are common traits of Large Hams.

Cassy: wouldn't Haruko from FLCL fit this trope almost perfectly?
Maybe also Asuka and Misato from Evangelion, come to think about it.

Charred Knight: Absolutly not for Asuka and Misato, as the topic says, you should be able to hear the person say "Did someone order a large ham?", those two are just loud, Misato might have counted if Evangelion wasn't Evangelion.

Ghosttree: Haruko seems to fit, though. She even shouts "It's LUUUUUUUNCHTIIIIIIIIIME!" in her first appearance, which is the closest I've seen to a character actually shouting "Did someone order a large ham?!" in their opening speech. Plus, nearly everything she does is totally OTT... Hm, does being Crazy Awesome stop you from being a large ham?

Uknown Troper: Judging by the examples given so far, yes. Then again, I'd be reluctant to make the Large Ham an Always Male character.
Uknown Troper: Removing Yuan. Yeah, he the occasional a flair for drama, but you never get the feeling he's stealing the spotlight in all his scenes and leaves chew marks on the scenery, like most other examples of this trope do. You never really gets the feeling that he's 'larger than life'.

Cassy: To the person who improved on my description of Olivia Armstrong: thanks, you really made my day! "Escalating war of feed me lines," hahaha!

cg1234: Big thank you to Lyc, for adding that bit about Zaroff, the Granddaddy of SF Ham.

Marz2: Maybe we need a subpage for regular Hams like Soooby and the other Hams who aren't large?

Freezair For A Limited Time: Oi! Another page gets cut in half! If I knew how to restore from earlier edits, I'd fix it—anyone want to repair this borked page?

Frank75: Maybe we should split this page, it's getting awfully long.

Shoebox Mm. I'm wondering if there needs to be a cleanup as per This Is Sparta, where the really dedicated Hams are sorted out from the otherwise-subdued actors who just occasionally shout their lines a lot.

Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Yeah, about 1/3 of this examples on this page are actual Large Hams - the rest are just Feed Me, No Indoor Voice, or "this character occasionally yells/overacts", along with some really baffling examples like Torgo.
Madrugada: I did some tidying, hope no one minds. I didn't remove any examples, but did move some around, especially the ones that had lots of examples from the same show or for the same actor.
Should H. P. Lovecraft be on the literature portion? His narration Oooze ham from NEARLY every subcutaneous PORE.

cg12345: Wouldn't that fit into Purple Prose, instead?
Regarding John Colicos, the following came from a review (actually a very complementary one) of his performance as King Leontes in _The Winter's Tale_: "In his movements there are occasional hints of the ham, but they come from the best hogs." (The Harvard Crimson)

On the change in Kor between _Star Trek_ and _Deep Space Nine_, it was due to the script he was handed in DS 9. It wasn't very good. I could tell at one point he got a chunk of dialogue that was nonsense because he shifted into the "Oh, heck, I'm just going to have fun with it and gleefully chew the scenery" mode.

Incidentally his son, Nicolas Colicos, carries on the tradition in musicals and can be heard singing "There's one more angel in heaven" in a cast album of _Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat_. I also saw a clip of his portrayal of Franz Leibkind in the London production of "The Producers". Now that was "larger than life" and amazingly fun.
Ethereal Mutation: I don't think this article needs to be cut so much as it needs a couple clean up squads to go in with pruning sheers and napalm. Or maybe this could just be given the old "subjective" (i.e. not an authoritative source) treatment.
Trogga: OK, when are we going to "fix" this page?
Black Humor: I'd like to nitpick with the caption: Neither of those hams is kosher, people aren't kosher. I'd have replaced it if I could think of anything better.

BRPXQZME: From the American Oxford Dictionary—kosher |ˈkoʊʃər|—adjective—(of food, or premises in which food is sold, cooked, or eaten) satisfying the requirements of Jewish law: a kosher kitchen.—• (of a person) observing Jewish food laws.''' So does he keep kosher? I'm guessing he probably doesn't. Can a person be kosher? Yes. The joke still stands, unless you can think of something that fits much better. And as you have found, it's a bit hard to top; I can't think of a better caption myself.

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